A new report has found that Germany companies’ push to go public is as strong in 2018 as it was at the turn of the millennium. The consulting firm EY did note that there had only been one Initial Public Offering (IPO) in Germany in the third quarter, that of Creditshelf. Over the course of the year, however, there had already been 15 IPO candidates with a total issue volume of around 9 billion US dollars (7.65 billion euros).

This is already more than during the entire previous year, when 14 companies went public and raised 3.7 billion US dollars. "And with several well-known IPO candidates having already announced their stock market plans, 2018 is likely to be the strongest IPO year since 2000," EY wrote in the study published on Tuesday.

Munich-based electric scooter manufacturer Govecs is scheduled to be listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange for the first time on October 2, and brake systems manufacturer Knorr-Bremse has already made public its stock market plans.

The German IPO market is thus going against the global trend: the number of IPOs worldwide fell by 22 percent year-on-year to 302 in the third quarter. However, the issue volume rose by 9 percent to almost 48 billion US dollars, mainly thanks to some very large IPOs in China.